help with standard streams and the file descriptor

[Robert Schweikert <rjschwei at hks dot com>]

I am working on getting our uses of iostream up to par with the new 
iostream model, i.e. standard C++ I/O streams. I have run into some 
problems and was able to work around most of them. However, for this one 
particular problem I am at a loss and am hoping someone on the list can 
provide me with a suggestion on how to address the issue.

The basic issue is the manipulation of flags on the file descriptor. 
Currently this is implemented like so.

bool utl_noInheritFile(int fildes)
{
#if !defined (WIN32)
    int flags = fcntl(fildes, F_GETFD);
    flags |= FD_CLOEXEC;
    return (fcntl(fildes, F_SETFD, flags) != -1);
#else
    long int h = _get_osfhandle(fildes);
    if (h != -1) {
	HANDLE handle = reinterpret_cast<HANDLE>(h);
	if (SetHandleInformation(handle, HANDLE_FLAG_INHERIT, 0))
	    return true;
    }
    return false;
#endif
}

and is called as follows:

utl_noInheritFile(journalStream->rdbuf()->fd());

The C++ standard does not support this as fd() is gone. Is there a way 
to do this in a portable fashion or will I be able to make this work 
only if I use the gcc extension as described in

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/27_io/howto.html#11

Help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Robert

--
Robert Schweikert                   MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU
                                               LINUX